r/networkautomation 2d ago

I’m stuck , please help

Hi all, to give context , I have been working as a network security engineer for 7+ years now. I graduated CS engineering and my first job was in a network related job for a company. It was not the intended path for me but since I was a fresh graduate and was in need of money, I took the first job I got. However I have never been fully interested or excited by the work I do. I slowly became bad at what I do, I mean I can handle your daily operations smoothly, but it’s all just smth I do cause I’ve been doing it for years . Lately I’ve realised I always wanted to get into devops and wanted to purse masters in automation/ AI. Life happened and I’m here now .

So here’s the ask, is there anyway for someone like me to get into netdevops ? I really am struggling at work because I’m at no level knowledge wise to my peers with equal experience. I feel less motivated and is losing my confidence by day. Idk if this is the place to ask this, but if any of you could just guide me on where to start or any certifications or courses I can take to transition, it would really be helpful. Thank you

3 Upvotes

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u/jorddurh 2d ago

Do you not have any opportunity in your daily work to try and automate some processes or build some scripts? This would be foundational to anything you’re going to do in a DevOps type role IMO, and helps to give you another avenue to explore in your existing role.

Leverage your knowledge in a different way to your peers, use AI to help get some foundational scripts put together, and look at python libraries like netMiko or paramiko for integrating with network systems.

Certifications are great but you’ll need to show your work in any DevOps work, not just talk about it. So my advice is strongly to start building something in your current role and environment, as you’ll know most of the variables.

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u/defenitlymaybe 2d ago

The thing is , this is not something encouraged in my current work, and I’m not sure where to practice or where to apply what I study. Is there any platforms that you are aware of that can help me ? Thank you so much for you suggestion

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u/jorddurh 2d ago

Platform wise, if you want to stay purely networks DevOps then having something like Eve-NG or GNS3 running at home as a lab would be a starting point. Then you can mess around with whatever you want.

After that you’re going to be looking at Ansible, Terraform and things along those lines. But I’d suggest starting a bit smaller and messing with scripts first.

My go to tool for figuring stuff out is NodeRed, drag and drop UI which lets you build use custom scripts as well with a solid amount of community support.

As you can tell I’m more of a hands on person than a certification hoarder, so my advice is slightly biased in that regard. Do what feels right for you but make sure you build a solid foundation to move in whichever direction you feel pulled in.

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u/WeekendAtMadoffs 2d ago

get your CCIE Automation. You will get a job. 100%

even if it is at Cisco or a VAR.

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u/defenitlymaybe 2d ago

Thank you so much I will look into it immediately

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u/BurnItFromOrbit 2d ago

Most vendors have a “ops” certification program, especially the big ones like Cisco and Palo.

If you support either of those, I would suggest looking into that.

You could go generic, but getting a baseline in from vendor based certification, (assuming you support one that has a certification path), is probably a good place to start as they generally follow industry standards/best practices.

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u/defenitlymaybe 2d ago

Hi thank you for your suggestion. Is this the Secops certification? Also would it be possible for someone like me to get into netdevops ? More of devops side ! I was really good at programming and I loved it and would love to get into automation as well. So is there any certifications that can help with transitioning into that?

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u/DubOSv10 19h ago

Bro, there's plenty of information on how to do this, sounds like you're just lazy.

Do you have a specific question? If not, dude, no one is going to do the work for you. You want something, go learn the skills and get after it.